Post by danks on Feb 7, 2018 0:40:42 GMT
Some people asked for a run down of my (4-1, 4th place) Bearka Champions experience a couple weekends ago at LVO so... so much typing... If you're interested in a decently lengthy read, enjoy.
If anyone reads this and wants my Masters breakdown , I can provide this in another post. Just let me know.
If you want to just skip the reports and check out my thoughts, you can scroll to the bottom.
Disclaimer: If anything is slightly off or incorrect, I apologize. It's been a bit of time and I played a ton of games that weekend, so this is my recollection as it stands now.
My list can be found on the DGI tournament page: www.discountgamesinc.com/tournaments/
This is my masters pairing, but Bearka is the same. I paired him with a Ragnor list I had no intention of playing.
Round 1 – Recon 2 – Baldur 1, Devourers host
The Baldur force has:
Megalith
Ghetto
Nuala/ Max trackers
Weavers
Gallow grove
Death wolves
Ravagers and the corresponding solos
Turn 1
I run. Super exciting. He preys the FEes on the right so they run left and the FEs on the left run to the right. I’m pretty aggressive in my positioning as I want to get maximum impact on the infantry models on the right specifically and at def 15, I’m not overly concerned about non-prey shooting. Baldur advanced cautiously, he’s got a wall on his side that he hides behind. The trackers do shoot down a few raiders, and spread out to reduce the impact of the sprays, the weavers space between them, but are within 14” of the edge of the board.
Turn 2
I hold the feat, waiting for Baldur to feat first. The FEs on the right assault the trackers and the bears both come in on the right to get a few Weavers. Between sprays, AOEs, and bears, there are only a couple models left in each unit. Lanyssa hangs out in a snow drift on the flag.
He brings up Baldur to the other side of a forest in the middle of the board. The ravagers charge into my EBDT tying up the left zone and the character unit advances into the forest and kills a few raiders. He isn’t able to contest my flag due to the number of models between him and the flag, but he does score his. He forgets to feat with Baldur though, so he is in a precarious position.
Score 1-1
Turn 3
Given the forgotten feat, I consider getting models on Baldur. If I clear the gallows grove with a couple raiders it’s likely I can get Bearka there. My dice do not want that to happen though, so instead the tree dies to some FE sprays. I clear the right zone and jam it full of models. Bearka feats. I’m able to get one raider within contest range of his flag.
Score 3-1.
Baldur doesn’t forget to feat this turn, but since he doesn’t want to go stationary, most of his models do not attack and instead contest my zone, but not my flag. He does kill the raider on his flag though.
Score 4-2
Given the feat, I cannot move too far, so I shoot the objective down and clear my zone.
I cannot contest the flag.
Score 7-3
The writing is on the wall, so my opponent goes for a long-shot assassination run onto Bearka that fortunately for me does not work out.
Score 9-4
Round 2 – Elara 2 – Defenders theme – Breakdown (double barbell)
Elara force has:
Sphinx
Griffon
Arcnode light
2 halbs units
2 defenders units
Corresponding solos
This is an interesting game of fairly decent threat ranges. Also, the defenders are immune to cold, and thus, my feat, with the solos in the army. Given the high number of infantry, I ambush both units of bears.
Turn 1
Elara goes first and runs, but is wary of the threat ranges of the raiders and FEs so spreads out more so than just getting in my face.
I counter this by also spreading out and cautiously advancing. I give him a few charges on key targets, but not a ton of halbs in any given spot except on Bearka who gets a bit too aggressive – whoops.
Turn 2
Elara decides to go for it, puts scything tough on a halb and feats. Critically, she misses a marked for death on Bearka through the arc node. The halbs charge across the board with 3-4 landing on Bearka but miss a couple of attacks so in all do four points of damage. The second unit of halbs also charges in but due to a positioning error on the leader, the couple of landed halbs aren’t able to attack Bearka. The halbs that can attack kills a bunch of raiders.
Borka goes, clears off the halbs, feats and repos to a safer spot. The raiders are given warcry and between their melee attacks and a few shots clear a decent amount more halbs. One contests the far zone. The bears both come in on the right as we’re hoping to sweep that zone eventually. They manage to kill 3-4 defenders and a halb or two.
Score 1-0
Turn 3
Elara comes back with the defenders doing a ton of damage to my mauler in the left zone. The defenders on the right try to chew through bears, and kill one or two of them. He contests my zone and clears the raider.
Score 1-1
Only a couple of models are stationary, so I make sure to take my free kills there. One of them is snacked to heal the Mauler’s blown spirit so he can buy and boost attacks onto the defenders, but my opponent makes 3-4 toughs in a row to make me spend all my fury for zero kills. Lol. Valka and bearka again clear the zone and again a raider contests. The defenders on the right get continue to be eaten by bears, but a couple hold on.
Turn 4
Score 2-1
Elara is getting anxious and my opponent doesn’t think he has a chance to win the game through attrition/scenario and he’s probably right. So he boundless charges, concentrated powers and fills up the Sphinx, charges the Mauler, and puts himself within 2” of Bearka. He also ran the griffon with scything touch to within 2”. I have 3 transfers and a full health earthborn, so the math is not great, but if he hits all his bought attacks and rolls really well for damage on all of them, he can get there. This doesn’t happen. He does kill the mauler however. Again he clears his zone.
Score 2-2
Bearka, valka and the pyre troll kill the Sphinx and the hydra. The FEs, remaining bears and the EBDT clear the right zone.
Turn 5
Score 4-2
My opponent decides to go for CPs and charges Elara on to the objective in my zone. Kills it but can’t contest.
Score 6-3. I score the zones again to go 8-3.
Round 3 – Jalaam – Imperial Warhost – Championship belt
I’m playing my friend, WTC captain and sparring partner Cory Burns. This has typically not been great for me in the past. Fortunately, Cory is new to Jalaam so maybe I have a chance.
Jalaam has:
2 sentinels
Gladiator
2 (maybe 3?) Archidons
2 Kreas
Agonizer
Beast handlers
Because he’s a beast brick that’s mostly going to play in the centre, I don’t ambush the bears.
The first couple turns are basically a wash so I’ll skip past them and just say we both moved up, feated (me first) and contested the zones.
One important note on the scenery in this game is that there was a massive building slanted on the left of the centre zone that had maybe an inch of the zone sticking out the edges of it. This was critical to the game.
Turn 3
I had jammed an archidon and krea with a unit of FEs supported by bears and valka. Lanyssa sat on the previously mentioned edge of the building in the centre zone and put up winter storm, stopping the archidon from flying. In Cory’s turn he wasn’t able to clear the jam, so instead chose to run the archidon around the FEs taking a couple free strikes. He wasn’t able to escape the walk threat of the bears because he couldn’t go over top.
I’m able to clear the archidon and push the jam further up. On the right and centre, the kreas had paralyzed both the Mauler and the Earthborn, but Cory unfortunately was within 7” (not the 6” he thought) for the walk and threat range of Northkin beasts under the stone. He loses both the bugs because of this.
Score 1-0
Turn 4
Cory shoots down the stone with jalaam (damn) kills the Mauler with the gladiator. The EBDT however is close enough to a wall to still be arm 20 so manages to survive the turn.
I clear the zone, leave the EBDT to his doom and push the jam with the FEs. Lanyssa continues to hide behind the building with winter storm up.
Score 2-0
Turn 5
Cory clears the right zone and contests with a beast handler but since he cannot fly over the wall with an archidon, is unable to contest with anything meaningful. He shoots down my stone again as I’m placing models to run into the right zone.
Score 2-1
I clear the zone, leave the pyre troll to die and consolidate my remaining models (Bearka, FEs, Bears, Valka, Lanyssa and the runebearer) around the left side of the building. I run a remaining couple of stone members into his zone.
Score 3-1
Turn 6
Cory shoots the stone members with Jalaam, kills my pyre troll and positions the remaining beasts to try and take my zone.
Score 3-2
One of the surviving FEs runs to the far zone to clinch the game as it’s impossible (thanks to the building and lanyssa) to score the central zone and his.
Score 4-2.
Game end on seven after we both score 6-4
Round 4 – Siege2 – Gravediggers - Championship belt
Siege 2’s force:
Triumph
Grenadier
Ayanna and Holt
Finn
Hitch
Ragman
Trenchers x 2
Trencher Commandos
2 Trencher busters
Well, it doesn’t get easier. From one member of my WTC 2017 team to another. I line up against Greg Schadt (eventual winner of Champions). We had both been chatting about how we were one-listing this event for the experience so we knew what was coming.
Turn 1
Greg goes first, runs up. Utilizes a central forest to hide some models and spaces out well. There’s not a ton of space between us given the amount of AD we have and the speed of our forces.
Bearka goes, feats hoping to at least save myself from some of the guns/melee attacks. In retrospect, this may have been a mistake, give that he’s quick enough to get most of the guns into threat range with stealth anyways, but I likely did save myself from a few of the further away guns as well as from just being charged. The raiders move up and launch AOEs all over the place. I’m hoping that even with stealth, the blast damage can hurt some trencher commandos, but the dice don’t show up. The scatters were pretty good, but I need to roll 8’s which isn’t great. In the end I think I take out 1-2 commandos and another one toughs.
Turn 2
Greg’s turn is absolutely brutal for me, particularly for a Bearka feat turn. He removes the majority of the raiders and a few FEs. What’s more concerning is it hasn’t cost him much to do it and the majority of his key pieces are unreachable. He has drifted a few trenchers toward the board edge though.
Bears ambush, one unit on each side of the board. One unit does well and kills 3-4 trenchers. The unit on the left however, is not so great and they miss all their attacks except one.
The remaining FEs get some decent sprays and remove 4-5 commandos (including the WAs). Overall, attrition-wise, it’s a good rebuttal turn.
Turn 3
Greg is able to kill a bear on each side of the table. My EBDT is in the open after killing a few trenchers, so he gets a few charges from trenchers and busters with harmed, darkshrouded, and fury all helping out. He also shoots down the objective.
Score 1-0
The grind continues. Bearka kills the busters and trenchers in the middle and repos to safety. The lacklustre bears on the left continue to swing ineffectively and the remaining FEs and bear on the right take out a couple more trenchers. At this point there are maybe 5-6 trenchers left across the table, but the trolls are pretty beat up too.
Score 1-0
Greg is able to clear the right zone with Hitch charging into the bears and killing one. Sad day. This zone needed to hold for one more turn in order to make this a game. Unfortunately the central forest is blocking me from reaching the zone with anything meaningful and the few remaining trenchers are lined up to continue contesting my zone one turn at a time.
Score 2-0
I collect a few control points where I can, but the writing is on the wall.
We end the game at 8-3 after I kill the objective and score the zone. Siege does try to kill Bearka on a means-nothing assassination attempt and fails miserably.
Round 5 – Heretic – Bump in the Night – Spread the Net
It’s been a long day, so what better way to end it than by playing everyone’s favourite scenario, Spread the Night. Blech.
Heretic’s force:
Cage rager
2x Gorehound
Double hollowmen
Dreadrots
Neigh slayers
Longfellow
Glimmer imp
Fortunately, I think Bearka is well-suited to play in this scenario due to his super aggressive playstyle and the timelock nature of his feat.
I ambush both units of bears because of the amount of infantry and because concealment does nothing for them since his shooting has eyeless sight.
Turn 1
Andrew runs up.
The raiders are able to move up and launch AOEs, not all of them are within range, but a few scatter well. One hero raiders scatters a shot into a trench full of hollowmen and kills 3-4 of them and a neigh slayer. Amazing. This dude got a promotion for sure. Andrew gave me a few hollowmen on the left to assault with the FEs and a take the bait. I wind up killing 2-3 hollowmen (so not worth it).
Turn 2
Andrew kills the FEs on the left, rebuilding the hollowmen. The other hollowmen are not as successful however and only kill 1-2 raiders. He brings the dreadrots up the middle, but ends his turn with only 5-6 of them in the centre zone.
Between the raiders and the FEs, we eliminate the rots contesting the centre zones. The bears ambush, one on each side of the board and charge/tie up the hollowmen units and contest his zone/flag. Heretic puts Reckoning on the bears on the left. The EBDT is able to charge a couple hollowmen on the left and be within 2 inches of a water feature. The pyre and mauler heroically protect the friendly zone.
Valka and Lanyssa sit on my flag.
Bearka moves forward into the central zone, puts up battle charged and feats.
Score 3-0
Turn 3
Andrew starts with the remaining hollowmen on the left, who put some damage on the bears, but don’t kill them. He moves up Longfellow to finish them off, but gets countercharged by the EBDT. Now, this is likely where Andrew tilts a bit and I can’t blame him. Like I said, it’s been a long day and it’s now about 11 p.m. The EBDT is basically in the open and he really focuses on him. He manages to get the arcnode over to gallows the ebdt and then pull it further with the gorehound and then charge it with neigh slayers. He definitely kills the EBDT, but in his haste, he does not score his zone or flag and only manages to run one dreadrot to my zone, which gets countercharged by the pyre and dies.
Score 5-0.
And that’s Champions. I end up fourth as they locked in the standings prior to the final round being played on Saturday.
My thoughts:
I went into this event with only a handful of test games with Bearka, and hadn’t fully convinced myself that he wasn’t the poor choice he’s been for a long time. I had meant to play him in a tournament the week before but the matchups I was in didn’t really allow for that.
Here’s a quote from a couple weeks before LVO to Mark Gerow “Ok... you need to talk me off the ledge here. I'm starting to think Bearka is a viable caster to play at LVO.”
After this Champions event, Bearka definitely earned a spot amongst our top casters in my mind. I really like him in SOTN where I feel the army pushes the pace of the game with incredible threat ranges and a sack full of pretty decent hammers.
The battlegroup – While Rok would be a really nice addition, I just couldn’t seem to make the points work (I also don’t own Rok). Each beast brings something pretty specific and invaluable to the list whether it’s the pyre for +2 str, Earths Blessing, Rage I don’t see an easy improvement on this group. While it’s only a few pieces for battle-charged, I found I barely cast that spell anyways, so not the end of the world.
Units –Every unit in this army (sans stone) is so aggressive. If I could go first the raiders and FE’s pinned people back, if I went second they were often within threat range of my opponents after they ran. I especially love telling people that Fire Eaters have a potential (however unlikely) threat range of 18” with Hunter’s Mark and stone. The bears are incredible. There was a time I didn’t think they were all that great… let me tell you, I was wrong. They hit like trucks, are hard as nails and at the very least are a huge distraction/concern for your opponents. With this selection of units there are few places on the board for the opposing army to hide.
Solos – All the solos performed very well all tournament. The fell caller does what he always does and buffs the raider (or sometimes bears) to pretty incredible levels. Lanyssa straight-up won me two games over the course of the weekend (played Abby2 and winter storm again was a big deal). The fact she can gain stealth off the drifts is really good, particularly for scenarios with deeper flags (Recon2, Spread the Net). Valka was probably the weakest of the group, but still found some utility as the combat solo he’s meant to be. It didn’t help that I don’t think he made a tough check all weekend. I kept wanting to use feign death and rise…
All in all, hope you’ve enjoyed (or tolerated) this giant rant. If you haven’t played Bearka yet, get out and do so.
If anyone reads this and wants my Masters breakdown , I can provide this in another post. Just let me know.
If you want to just skip the reports and check out my thoughts, you can scroll to the bottom.
Disclaimer: If anything is slightly off or incorrect, I apologize. It's been a bit of time and I played a ton of games that weekend, so this is my recollection as it stands now.
My list can be found on the DGI tournament page: www.discountgamesinc.com/tournaments/
This is my masters pairing, but Bearka is the same. I paired him with a Ragnor list I had no intention of playing.
Round 1 – Recon 2 – Baldur 1, Devourers host
The Baldur force has:
Megalith
Ghetto
Nuala/ Max trackers
Weavers
Gallow grove
Death wolves
Ravagers and the corresponding solos
Turn 1
I run. Super exciting. He preys the FEes on the right so they run left and the FEs on the left run to the right. I’m pretty aggressive in my positioning as I want to get maximum impact on the infantry models on the right specifically and at def 15, I’m not overly concerned about non-prey shooting. Baldur advanced cautiously, he’s got a wall on his side that he hides behind. The trackers do shoot down a few raiders, and spread out to reduce the impact of the sprays, the weavers space between them, but are within 14” of the edge of the board.
Turn 2
I hold the feat, waiting for Baldur to feat first. The FEs on the right assault the trackers and the bears both come in on the right to get a few Weavers. Between sprays, AOEs, and bears, there are only a couple models left in each unit. Lanyssa hangs out in a snow drift on the flag.
He brings up Baldur to the other side of a forest in the middle of the board. The ravagers charge into my EBDT tying up the left zone and the character unit advances into the forest and kills a few raiders. He isn’t able to contest my flag due to the number of models between him and the flag, but he does score his. He forgets to feat with Baldur though, so he is in a precarious position.
Score 1-1
Turn 3
Given the forgotten feat, I consider getting models on Baldur. If I clear the gallows grove with a couple raiders it’s likely I can get Bearka there. My dice do not want that to happen though, so instead the tree dies to some FE sprays. I clear the right zone and jam it full of models. Bearka feats. I’m able to get one raider within contest range of his flag.
Score 3-1.
Baldur doesn’t forget to feat this turn, but since he doesn’t want to go stationary, most of his models do not attack and instead contest my zone, but not my flag. He does kill the raider on his flag though.
Score 4-2
Given the feat, I cannot move too far, so I shoot the objective down and clear my zone.
I cannot contest the flag.
Score 7-3
The writing is on the wall, so my opponent goes for a long-shot assassination run onto Bearka that fortunately for me does not work out.
Score 9-4
Round 2 – Elara 2 – Defenders theme – Breakdown (double barbell)
Elara force has:
Sphinx
Griffon
Arcnode light
2 halbs units
2 defenders units
Corresponding solos
This is an interesting game of fairly decent threat ranges. Also, the defenders are immune to cold, and thus, my feat, with the solos in the army. Given the high number of infantry, I ambush both units of bears.
Turn 1
Elara goes first and runs, but is wary of the threat ranges of the raiders and FEs so spreads out more so than just getting in my face.
I counter this by also spreading out and cautiously advancing. I give him a few charges on key targets, but not a ton of halbs in any given spot except on Bearka who gets a bit too aggressive – whoops.
Turn 2
Elara decides to go for it, puts scything tough on a halb and feats. Critically, she misses a marked for death on Bearka through the arc node. The halbs charge across the board with 3-4 landing on Bearka but miss a couple of attacks so in all do four points of damage. The second unit of halbs also charges in but due to a positioning error on the leader, the couple of landed halbs aren’t able to attack Bearka. The halbs that can attack kills a bunch of raiders.
Borka goes, clears off the halbs, feats and repos to a safer spot. The raiders are given warcry and between their melee attacks and a few shots clear a decent amount more halbs. One contests the far zone. The bears both come in on the right as we’re hoping to sweep that zone eventually. They manage to kill 3-4 defenders and a halb or two.
Score 1-0
Turn 3
Elara comes back with the defenders doing a ton of damage to my mauler in the left zone. The defenders on the right try to chew through bears, and kill one or two of them. He contests my zone and clears the raider.
Score 1-1
Only a couple of models are stationary, so I make sure to take my free kills there. One of them is snacked to heal the Mauler’s blown spirit so he can buy and boost attacks onto the defenders, but my opponent makes 3-4 toughs in a row to make me spend all my fury for zero kills. Lol. Valka and bearka again clear the zone and again a raider contests. The defenders on the right get continue to be eaten by bears, but a couple hold on.
Turn 4
Score 2-1
Elara is getting anxious and my opponent doesn’t think he has a chance to win the game through attrition/scenario and he’s probably right. So he boundless charges, concentrated powers and fills up the Sphinx, charges the Mauler, and puts himself within 2” of Bearka. He also ran the griffon with scything touch to within 2”. I have 3 transfers and a full health earthborn, so the math is not great, but if he hits all his bought attacks and rolls really well for damage on all of them, he can get there. This doesn’t happen. He does kill the mauler however. Again he clears his zone.
Score 2-2
Bearka, valka and the pyre troll kill the Sphinx and the hydra. The FEs, remaining bears and the EBDT clear the right zone.
Turn 5
Score 4-2
My opponent decides to go for CPs and charges Elara on to the objective in my zone. Kills it but can’t contest.
Score 6-3. I score the zones again to go 8-3.
Round 3 – Jalaam – Imperial Warhost – Championship belt
I’m playing my friend, WTC captain and sparring partner Cory Burns. This has typically not been great for me in the past. Fortunately, Cory is new to Jalaam so maybe I have a chance.
Jalaam has:
2 sentinels
Gladiator
2 (maybe 3?) Archidons
2 Kreas
Agonizer
Beast handlers
Because he’s a beast brick that’s mostly going to play in the centre, I don’t ambush the bears.
The first couple turns are basically a wash so I’ll skip past them and just say we both moved up, feated (me first) and contested the zones.
One important note on the scenery in this game is that there was a massive building slanted on the left of the centre zone that had maybe an inch of the zone sticking out the edges of it. This was critical to the game.
Turn 3
I had jammed an archidon and krea with a unit of FEs supported by bears and valka. Lanyssa sat on the previously mentioned edge of the building in the centre zone and put up winter storm, stopping the archidon from flying. In Cory’s turn he wasn’t able to clear the jam, so instead chose to run the archidon around the FEs taking a couple free strikes. He wasn’t able to escape the walk threat of the bears because he couldn’t go over top.
I’m able to clear the archidon and push the jam further up. On the right and centre, the kreas had paralyzed both the Mauler and the Earthborn, but Cory unfortunately was within 7” (not the 6” he thought) for the walk and threat range of Northkin beasts under the stone. He loses both the bugs because of this.
Score 1-0
Turn 4
Cory shoots down the stone with jalaam (damn) kills the Mauler with the gladiator. The EBDT however is close enough to a wall to still be arm 20 so manages to survive the turn.
I clear the zone, leave the EBDT to his doom and push the jam with the FEs. Lanyssa continues to hide behind the building with winter storm up.
Score 2-0
Turn 5
Cory clears the right zone and contests with a beast handler but since he cannot fly over the wall with an archidon, is unable to contest with anything meaningful. He shoots down my stone again as I’m placing models to run into the right zone.
Score 2-1
I clear the zone, leave the pyre troll to die and consolidate my remaining models (Bearka, FEs, Bears, Valka, Lanyssa and the runebearer) around the left side of the building. I run a remaining couple of stone members into his zone.
Score 3-1
Turn 6
Cory shoots the stone members with Jalaam, kills my pyre troll and positions the remaining beasts to try and take my zone.
Score 3-2
One of the surviving FEs runs to the far zone to clinch the game as it’s impossible (thanks to the building and lanyssa) to score the central zone and his.
Score 4-2.
Game end on seven after we both score 6-4
Round 4 – Siege2 – Gravediggers - Championship belt
Siege 2’s force:
Triumph
Grenadier
Ayanna and Holt
Finn
Hitch
Ragman
Trenchers x 2
Trencher Commandos
2 Trencher busters
Well, it doesn’t get easier. From one member of my WTC 2017 team to another. I line up against Greg Schadt (eventual winner of Champions). We had both been chatting about how we were one-listing this event for the experience so we knew what was coming.
Turn 1
Greg goes first, runs up. Utilizes a central forest to hide some models and spaces out well. There’s not a ton of space between us given the amount of AD we have and the speed of our forces.
Bearka goes, feats hoping to at least save myself from some of the guns/melee attacks. In retrospect, this may have been a mistake, give that he’s quick enough to get most of the guns into threat range with stealth anyways, but I likely did save myself from a few of the further away guns as well as from just being charged. The raiders move up and launch AOEs all over the place. I’m hoping that even with stealth, the blast damage can hurt some trencher commandos, but the dice don’t show up. The scatters were pretty good, but I need to roll 8’s which isn’t great. In the end I think I take out 1-2 commandos and another one toughs.
Turn 2
Greg’s turn is absolutely brutal for me, particularly for a Bearka feat turn. He removes the majority of the raiders and a few FEs. What’s more concerning is it hasn’t cost him much to do it and the majority of his key pieces are unreachable. He has drifted a few trenchers toward the board edge though.
Bears ambush, one unit on each side of the board. One unit does well and kills 3-4 trenchers. The unit on the left however, is not so great and they miss all their attacks except one.
The remaining FEs get some decent sprays and remove 4-5 commandos (including the WAs). Overall, attrition-wise, it’s a good rebuttal turn.
Turn 3
Greg is able to kill a bear on each side of the table. My EBDT is in the open after killing a few trenchers, so he gets a few charges from trenchers and busters with harmed, darkshrouded, and fury all helping out. He also shoots down the objective.
Score 1-0
The grind continues. Bearka kills the busters and trenchers in the middle and repos to safety. The lacklustre bears on the left continue to swing ineffectively and the remaining FEs and bear on the right take out a couple more trenchers. At this point there are maybe 5-6 trenchers left across the table, but the trolls are pretty beat up too.
Score 1-0
Greg is able to clear the right zone with Hitch charging into the bears and killing one. Sad day. This zone needed to hold for one more turn in order to make this a game. Unfortunately the central forest is blocking me from reaching the zone with anything meaningful and the few remaining trenchers are lined up to continue contesting my zone one turn at a time.
Score 2-0
I collect a few control points where I can, but the writing is on the wall.
We end the game at 8-3 after I kill the objective and score the zone. Siege does try to kill Bearka on a means-nothing assassination attempt and fails miserably.
Round 5 – Heretic – Bump in the Night – Spread the Net
It’s been a long day, so what better way to end it than by playing everyone’s favourite scenario, Spread the Night. Blech.
Heretic’s force:
Cage rager
2x Gorehound
Double hollowmen
Dreadrots
Neigh slayers
Longfellow
Glimmer imp
Fortunately, I think Bearka is well-suited to play in this scenario due to his super aggressive playstyle and the timelock nature of his feat.
I ambush both units of bears because of the amount of infantry and because concealment does nothing for them since his shooting has eyeless sight.
Turn 1
Andrew runs up.
The raiders are able to move up and launch AOEs, not all of them are within range, but a few scatter well. One hero raiders scatters a shot into a trench full of hollowmen and kills 3-4 of them and a neigh slayer. Amazing. This dude got a promotion for sure. Andrew gave me a few hollowmen on the left to assault with the FEs and a take the bait. I wind up killing 2-3 hollowmen (so not worth it).
Turn 2
Andrew kills the FEs on the left, rebuilding the hollowmen. The other hollowmen are not as successful however and only kill 1-2 raiders. He brings the dreadrots up the middle, but ends his turn with only 5-6 of them in the centre zone.
Between the raiders and the FEs, we eliminate the rots contesting the centre zones. The bears ambush, one on each side of the board and charge/tie up the hollowmen units and contest his zone/flag. Heretic puts Reckoning on the bears on the left. The EBDT is able to charge a couple hollowmen on the left and be within 2 inches of a water feature. The pyre and mauler heroically protect the friendly zone.
Valka and Lanyssa sit on my flag.
Bearka moves forward into the central zone, puts up battle charged and feats.
Score 3-0
Turn 3
Andrew starts with the remaining hollowmen on the left, who put some damage on the bears, but don’t kill them. He moves up Longfellow to finish them off, but gets countercharged by the EBDT. Now, this is likely where Andrew tilts a bit and I can’t blame him. Like I said, it’s been a long day and it’s now about 11 p.m. The EBDT is basically in the open and he really focuses on him. He manages to get the arcnode over to gallows the ebdt and then pull it further with the gorehound and then charge it with neigh slayers. He definitely kills the EBDT, but in his haste, he does not score his zone or flag and only manages to run one dreadrot to my zone, which gets countercharged by the pyre and dies.
Score 5-0.
And that’s Champions. I end up fourth as they locked in the standings prior to the final round being played on Saturday.
My thoughts:
I went into this event with only a handful of test games with Bearka, and hadn’t fully convinced myself that he wasn’t the poor choice he’s been for a long time. I had meant to play him in a tournament the week before but the matchups I was in didn’t really allow for that.
Here’s a quote from a couple weeks before LVO to Mark Gerow “Ok... you need to talk me off the ledge here. I'm starting to think Bearka is a viable caster to play at LVO.”
After this Champions event, Bearka definitely earned a spot amongst our top casters in my mind. I really like him in SOTN where I feel the army pushes the pace of the game with incredible threat ranges and a sack full of pretty decent hammers.
The battlegroup – While Rok would be a really nice addition, I just couldn’t seem to make the points work (I also don’t own Rok). Each beast brings something pretty specific and invaluable to the list whether it’s the pyre for +2 str, Earths Blessing, Rage I don’t see an easy improvement on this group. While it’s only a few pieces for battle-charged, I found I barely cast that spell anyways, so not the end of the world.
Units –Every unit in this army (sans stone) is so aggressive. If I could go first the raiders and FE’s pinned people back, if I went second they were often within threat range of my opponents after they ran. I especially love telling people that Fire Eaters have a potential (however unlikely) threat range of 18” with Hunter’s Mark and stone. The bears are incredible. There was a time I didn’t think they were all that great… let me tell you, I was wrong. They hit like trucks, are hard as nails and at the very least are a huge distraction/concern for your opponents. With this selection of units there are few places on the board for the opposing army to hide.
Solos – All the solos performed very well all tournament. The fell caller does what he always does and buffs the raider (or sometimes bears) to pretty incredible levels. Lanyssa straight-up won me two games over the course of the weekend (played Abby2 and winter storm again was a big deal). The fact she can gain stealth off the drifts is really good, particularly for scenarios with deeper flags (Recon2, Spread the Net). Valka was probably the weakest of the group, but still found some utility as the combat solo he’s meant to be. It didn’t help that I don’t think he made a tough check all weekend. I kept wanting to use feign death and rise…
All in all, hope you’ve enjoyed (or tolerated) this giant rant. If you haven’t played Bearka yet, get out and do so.
